Charged - Book One Read online

  “You never come to my place.”

  This wasn’t true. I just hadn’t been to her place since my knee was blown out. I’d been here plenty of times before that.

  “Lolita, I need a favor.” I watched her expression change as she became aware I wasn’t visiting.

  “I need you to watch Zero for a couple of days and I need you to stay away from my place. There are a few people hanging around that don’t really like me right now.”

  “Keg, you know I can’t have dogs here.”

  “It’s just this one time and besides, for some reason he doesn’t bark.” I put him down on the floor to limp and look as pathetic as possible and it worked.

  “Awww, poor puppy,” she said.

  “He also needs a vet. I’ll pay you back.”

  Trying not to notice how nice she smelled and how good she looked in the lace teddy, I kissed her cheek and left muttering a few heartfelt thank-yous.

  CHAPTER 14

  WHEN I GOT TO AARON’S, he was excited and relieved when he saw me.

  “Everything’s ready. We’re taking off in two hours,” he said, as he let me in the back door of the shop. I sat myself down on a stool as he bolted the door. Two hours seemed too long. Surely they would show up here.

  Aaron was a good man and I couldn’t take him down with me in what I thought was a single stupid act or two.

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea that you join me, Aaron.”

  “Don’t give me the little-brother lecture, ‘cuz I’m pretty sure you need me more than I need you.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing, but I had to tell him the truth. I agreed privately to myself that I needed his help, but I couldn’t make him an accessory.

  “There were two guys waiting for me at my place.”

  His attention then turned into an expression I hadn’t seen before. I think it was somewhere between genuine concern and fear. I could only imagine what was passing through his mind.

  “I’m pretty sure I just committed a felony.”

  “Expand on that,” he said calmly.

  “Assault with a deadly weapon against a federal agent.”

  “Over Kye?”

  “No, over my dog. Kye wasn’t there.”

  This didn’t make him laugh. His expression didn’t change at all.

  “And the dog is?”

  “Safe.”

  “And the federal agent?”

  “Left handcuffed to his partner with both of their guns removed and thrown on my dresser. I hit one over the head with the butt of my twenty-two, which was loaded, but that was before I knew he was an agent. Oh and the box is evidence, I should have turned over to the police, the minute I found it, second-degree felony, maybe a misdemeanor.”

  “That it?” he said.

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Well, I thought it was serious. You said, ‘assault’ and I realize this affects your moral compass, but I do have two felonies and I think you are overreacting.”

  My expression now transformed into a frown instead of panic. This wasn’t what I expected to hear. I took in the information and he raised his eyebrows and shoulders at me. Mentally, I started making a list of things I needed to ask him. I shook my head, thinking it was a misunderstanding, or maybe he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I was hoping that. I was pretty sure, if he had a felony, he wasn’t in prison long. He was too young.

  “I asked you if there was anything else-”

  “You weren’t specific,” he said.

  And that was that. My best friend was a convicted felon and I was a good cop turned bad over a Chihuahua, a childhood friend and a stupid box. At first, I did everything by the book. And now, I was leaving federal agents handcuffed to each other and running like a thief all because of the evidence I’d removed from Richie’s place. I started questioned everything I’d done in the last 24 hours.

  I noticed there was something was different about Aaron. I expected more alarm or panic from him, but his face was stoic, as if he was beyond the situation. He pulled out a very old bottle of gin from the safe and poured two full glasses for us and made a call.

  “Jared, change the flight plan,” he said, “we need to leave as soon as possible. Tell Ian to pick us up now.”

  I’d never heard Aaron use these names before and now I was happy to have the gin. I wasn’t about to ask him questions because right now, he was my way out. And I couldn’t believe I was actually going to run from the FBI.

  “We’ll be in the air soon,” he said.

  The pain in my knee was reaching into my thigh again and I was sure my expression said everything that I didn’t. So I picked up the glass, clinked it against his and downed it. Then I poured myself another regretting everything I’d done in the last twenty-four hours.

  In less than twenty minutes an Escalade pulled in front of the shop. It was Ian. Ian looked military: lots of muscle, really short haircut and an expressionless face. He greeted Aaron as “Mr. Stanisky,” and I soon found out that Jared was the pilot. We boarded the plane and although I was relieved to now be headed to Arizona, I ran everything over in my head. What made me keep the box? Why didn’t I turn it over to evidence? It had to be because of the way Richie was killed. As the plane ascended, I decided to leave the worry behind me, along with the guilt and the unequivocal certainty that I would be in jail upon our return.

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN WE GOT TO ARIZONA, we first flew around the west rim of the canyon. The rock formations were amazing. Goliath. For an hour, we watched the terrain. I’d seen the canyon when I was in my twenties and had always wanted to see it again. It was breathtaking. The huge fissure with is beautiful terrace walls was just profound. Layers upon layers of ancient rock exposed over millions of years and the Colorado River running through it. The view and the gin almost made me forget why I was even it the plane.

  Aaron started to talk to me through the headphones we had on. The engine was so loud that, without them, you couldn’t hear a thing.

  “You know the Pueblo tribes in this area say their ancestors lived here. They were cliff dwellers. They believed they came from an old world into a new world through a sacred place that is located in the canyon. They had a legend that when a blue star fell, that it marked the purification of the Earth and only their people and the animals would be saved. It’s said that they held the balance of the world in the way that they lived.”

  “What happened to the old world?” I said.

  “It was covered in ice and they were forced to leave. But the skeleton man who led them from the third world to the fourth world told them to watch for their lost white brothers,” he was smiling now.

  “What’s so amazing about that?”

  “It was about 1200 A.D.”

  Okay, I guess that was interesting, considering the white man hadn’t discovered America yet.

  “You should start a tour,” I said, now smiling.

  “You know what else? They were the first Pueblo people to bind their infant’s heads with wood to shape them into cones.”

  Now he was creeping me out. As if the tiny plane wasn’t enough. And now that I was creeped out, I started to worry. I had a good idea of the not-so-friendly terrain we were headed for and I suddenly became aware of how badly I’d planned this. I brought no food, no water and was hoping that Aaron thought of these things.

  I looked around the small plane and noticed two large duffel bags. This made me feel a little better. The plane itself wasn’t one of those four-seater Mooneys that you could feel every little bump in and not the kind you could describe as a puddle-jumper, but it was small enough.

  We were doing around 160 miles an hour and I was starting to get that feeling of being too closed in. Aaron, of course, was enjoying himself immensely.

  “Where exactly are we headed?”

  “Southwest of the north rim, about thirty miles from Phantom Ranch,” he answered.

  After a few more minutes, Aaron motioned to me th
at we were right over the spot and the airplane descended enough to fly below the radar. He then grabbed one of the duffel bags and pulled it into the cockpit.

  Looking out the window, I noticed three tiny white dots deep in the middle of the y-crevice in the canyon below us.

  “What do you make of that?” I said.

  The pilot said something and Aaron said, “government satellite dishes.”

  “Kind of strange, don’t you think? I wonder what kind of reception they are getting, surrounded by rock thousands of feet high?”

  It was strange. The whole canyon was a national park, not to be developed. I continued to look at the white dots and it occurred to me that we weren’t landing and that there was no place to land.

  Right when Aaron saw my expression, he knew I knew. He then proceeded to pull out a pair of goggles and helmets out of the large duffel bags and one parachute. Just one. I knew we were flying under the radar almost at sea level, but when I looked down to the six thousand feet into the canyon below us, I thought I would pass out.

  “We’re going to do a tandem jump. That’s why you only see one chute, but it’s rated for two people.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” I said, frantically. He had kept this from me the whole time, knowing I would never agree to jump out of a perfectly good plane. I was really hoping he had a backup plan.

  “Look down there. Do you see a runway? Besides, I’m not hiking ten miles to get to the coordinates,” he said, smiling again.

  He was excited and I was going to be sick. I now remembered he liked to skydive. He said it was exhilarating and that everyone should do it at least once. My hands were sweating. My heart was racing and I couldn’t control my expression or my fear.

  “I’m not doing this. I can’t do this!”

  “Two minutes, you guys,” Jared said, into our headphones. The plane descended some more and then leveled out.

  “It’s illegal to skydive into the Grand Canyon!” I said, knowing this to be true.

  “You’ve already got the FBI after you and for me it’s an opportunity of a lifetime!” Aaron said, yelling over the sound of the engine.

  He was laughing at my panic. He started putting the parachute on himself and then proceeded to gear me up with a harness.

  “Relax, I’ve got a D license.”

  This meant nothing to me and the D sounded bad.

  “I’ve jumped over 500 times. It’s easy,” he said.

  That was all I got, something about D license and no additional instructions. My legs felt like rubber and my stomach started to turn sour. I was terrified of heights and anything else that was going to put my body into a free-fall. Just being in the plane was bad enough.

  After Aaron attached me to him via the harness and a series of metal hooks, he motioned for me to grab onto a rail mounted on the outside of the plane while he slid the side-panel door open. This, I was not going to do. The plane filled with an enormous gust of air. I was certain I was going to die. Aaron then violently shoved us out the door. He knew I wouldn’t jump.

  We were forced forward for a few seconds due to the speed of the plane we’d just exited. Then, we were gaining speed. I couldn’t speak and I thought I would lose consciousness. I wasn’t certain if I’d soiled myself. I wasn’t certain if we were going too fast. It seemed like we were doing over a hundred miles an hour. It was surreal, not really like falling at all. More like flying. There was nothing surging pass us, like in a car; there was just air. But I was certain, in the near future, if I lived, that I would throw Aaron from a fast-moving vehicle while I said, “it’s easy!”

  After what seemed like a lifetime, Aaron deployed the chute and we jerked up and then started to slow and it was quiet, very quiet, while we floated downward. We slowed significantly; the difference was astonishing to me. For a second, I didn’t think we would decelerate at all. My heart started to calm down as we approached the ground. And the gratitude I felt for the ground was overwhelming.

  CHAPTER 16

  WHEN WE HIT THE GROUND, I landed right on my bad knee, sending an unbearable wave of pain through my entire body. Aaron had us separated and the chute detached in a matter of seconds. I rolled around in agony grabbing my knee. Then I cursed for about two minutes under my breath, digging my hands into the desert sand. My head was reeling from the jump and I was grunting through my teeth.

  “Haven’t you heard of a jeep, you idiot!”

  I stared up at Aaron, enraged. I almost felt like I’d been taken hostage. And he looked back at me completely confused.

  “I don’t think a jeep would’ve gotten down here and a mule would have taken forever.”

  I was getting sick of his logical responses. I tried to concentrate on my breathing as the pain ran up into my hip and down into my foot. “You’re a freak! Do you even have parents or did you climb out of a puddle of adrenaline?”

  The expression on Aaron’s face changed; he was concerned now. What probably should have been a pretty good landing for my first time skydiving had turned me inside out because of my injury. I was so scared when he pushed me out of the plane that I forgot I even had a bad knee. I should’ve done everything I could to avoid landing on it.

  I looked at Aaron for a second, still trying to calm my breathing. He looked like a man instead of a kid with bright orange hair. The pain slowly started to subside and I knew that, in his mind, there was no other way to get me here. This was the most logical choice given our limited time. I tried to let go of my anger, because he was right. I would’ve never jumped.

  When I could start speaking again, I continued to curse at him for two more minutes and a number of the obscenities didn’t make sense and made him laugh. Friend or not, I was still going to throw him from a fast-moving vehicle in the future, which he would probably find exhilarating. If I could’ve gotten up and beat the living crap out of him, I think I would’ve.

  “This wasn’t exactly what I’d pictured,” he said, removing the black harness from my body. As if he had calculated the whole event in his head and just now realized he forgot to include the fact that I’m injured into the equation. He then rolled up the parachute into a large ball. “You wouldn’t have gone along with the plan, Lew, if I told you the plan.”

  This was true. I didn’t care. I was still pissed.

  “Approach me with logic! Explain to me that there was no other way,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  “Then you wouldn’t have enjoyed the view. And you would’ve been uncomfortable the whole flight. Am I wrong?”

  I attempted to stand, trying to control my mouth and manage the pain in my knee.

  “Help me get up!” I barked at him. I didn’t want to discuss this anymore. He was right and I was ticked off.

  He helped me up and I hopped on one leg toward the satellite dishes.

  “So, now what?”

  “Wait!” he said, motioning me to stop. “Doesn’t it seem a little strange that this is completely unprotected, no fence or anything.”

  “Doesn’t it seem stranger that there are three satellite dishes in a national park?” This wasn’t a question.

  He raised his eyebrows again and nodded his head in agreement with me. After a few more minutes, I was able to put a little pressure on my bad leg, which meant I could limp, but barely.

  “Give me your jacket,” he said, reaching out his arm.

  I took off my jacket and threw it at him with a little too much force. He caught it and gave me an unhappy expression then he threw it at the satellite dish from about ten feet away.

  Nothing happened.

  “Well, I guess this is it, man,” he said, smiling. Aaron then walked about thirty feet back, then started running towards the first satellite dish and body-slammed it. Yes, he actually body-slammed it. He was a freak. My best friend was completely insane.

  Nothing happened. Well, actually he fell to the ground grabbing his chest, but nothing interesting happened.

  “It’s not rigged or anything, man.”
/>
  “I can see that, genius!” I shook my head and limped towards him and then around the satellite dishes, looking for something unusual.

  “Are these the exact coordinates?”

  “Exactly. I checked them twice. If it makes you feel more secure, there’s a GPS in the bag. Check it yourself.”

  I was not interested in doing this. I knew they were right.

  “This is it, Lew! You don’t just set three satellite dishes in the middle of the Grand Canyon like this.”

  He stood up, looking at me, “besides, do you know how much one of these things costs?

  I shrugged my shoulders, not caring about the cost.

  “Give me the box. It’s in the bag.”

  I hopped over, took the box out of the duffel bag and handed it to him.

  He set it on the ground in the middle between the first and second dish. This didn’t amuse me.

  “This was your plan! To jump out of a plane, body-slam the base of a satellite dish and reenact ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’!” I was more frustrated with myself than Aaron now.

  “Did you even have a plan?” he rebutted.

  “Please tell me you thought of a way out of here that doesn’t consist of me rock climbing?”

  “Relax. I covered everything. We have to walk west five miles to where Jared can pick us up, but he can’t be here until ten tomorrow.”

  “Walk. Walk!” I said one more time, frowning. It was clear to me that he was completely crazy and if I could catch him, I was going to hurt him.

  “Ten a.m. tomorrow! Let’s pretend I can walk five miles, which I can’t! Do you realize what lives in these canyons?”

  “Yes, yes, all full of protein, bossman.”

  He was smiling again. I was getting tired of the smiling. I wanted to rip that smile off his face and shove it up his…. I stopped this thought. I needed him to get out of this place. I could hurt him after we were back on the plane. Walk. I felt a little delirious at the thought. I should have been more honest about the knee.